1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a valve useable on a vacuum line or network of vacuum lines, in particular a network of vacuum lines arranged in a hospital building.
2. Related Art
In the operating, emergency, intensive care or hospitalization rooms, it is common to use medical gases, such as oxygen, air, N2O/O2 mixtures, etc., to treat medium-term and long-term patients, and also for emergency operations. These gases are conveyed to their site of use in the hospital either in gas cylinders or similar, or via a gas line or network of lines arranged in the hospital.
Similarly, it is also common to arrange therein a vacuum line or a network of vacuum lines, that is lines under negative pressure, also running through the various sites or rooms where the vacuum is needed, in particular the treatment rooms, operating theatres, bedrooms, etc. Vacuum is in fact used there to draw off various liquids, such as blood, mucous, body fluids or similar, during the treatment provided to the patients.
A vacuum network comprises one or more lines in which a negative pressure is maintained by means of one or more vacuum pumps or other similar vacuum generating devices. This is called a negative pressure network or vacuum network, because the pressure prevailing therein is lower than the atmospheric pressure, that is lower than 106 Pa (=1 bar).
The use of a vacuum network in a hospital environment is described in particular in document EP-A-1026567 which can be referred to for further details on this type of installation.
In fact, it may happen that the vacuum network can no longer perform its normal role because it suffers a failure or an accidental and unforeseeable interruption, for example due to damage caused to the fluid feed pipes, to the members for controlling, regulating and interrupting the flow of the various fluids in circulation.
It is then vitally necessary to guarantee a continuous presence of vacuum in the various operating rooms or similar.
For this purpose, it has been proposed by European patent application No. 07300937.5 filed by the Applicant to use a mobile functional unit for ensuring temporary distribution of medical gas and vacuum, comprising one or more standby medical gas cylinders for guaranteeing continuous distribution of the medical gases, and also a vacuum pump for creating a negative pressure in the line to which it is connected, thereby to guarantee continuous distribution of the vacuum.
One problem that arises is to be able to connect such a mobile unit easily and rapidly to the hospital vacuum network in case of failure of the vacuum network, in order to avoid any interruption of the vacuum distribution in the hospital or similar. The failure on the central vacuum network may be due for example to a problem in the vacuum plant or, obviously, on the distribution network, for example caused by a break of external vacuum lines during maintenance operations or similar.